Blessing Hospital is underway on a $70 million addition to its 11th Street campus in Quincy, Ill. The four-story addition will achieve two major goals: Relocation of the three inpatient Blessing Behavioral Center units from the 14th Street campus to 11th Street, consolidating all inpatient care in one building; and creation of dozens of new private patient rooms.
“Consolidating inpatient care will make Blessing Hospital more efficient,” said Maureen Kahn, president/chief executive officer, Blessing Hospital. “We will no longer need to maintain the 14th Street building as a hospital. That is expensive. We will continue to use it for support services, but no inpatient care will be done there, decreasing the cost of maintaining the structure to the building codes required of a hospital facility.”
“A private room is among the most common request of our patients,” she said. “In addition to making hospitalization a little more comfortable, private rooms decrease the risk for infection.”
The addition will sit to the north of the current patient tower, built in 1970, and to the west of the Blessing Cancer Center. The ground level and first floor of the addition will house the three Blessing Behavioral Center inpatient units. The second and third floors will have a total of 52 private rooms. The fourth floor of the addition will not be used at this time, but will be available for future expansion.
In addition to the 52 new private rooms, 52 existing patient rooms will be made private for a total of 104 private rooms available to Blessing patients as a result of the project. Because the existing rooms will go from two beds to one, the project will not add to the total number of beds Blessing Hospital is licensed to operate.
The main entrance to the Blessing-Rieman College of Nursing will also be relocated as part of the addition. The project will be completed in two years.
Blessing Hospital will use $33 million in cash and routine capital investment to pay for the building. The rest of the funds will come from a combination of borrowing and fundraising. The levels of borrowing and fundraising will be determined at a later date.
“While we are always careful with our expenditures as good stewards of our patients’ money, Blessing Hospital staff and management have been extra frugal for several years with the goal of someday building an addition to the hospital to better serve our region with as little borrowed money as possible,” Kahn said.
